Your Wild World, a curiously named 3D printing startup, hopes to deliver multicolor 3D prints on your existing personal 3D printer.
Their approach is what they call, “Parfait Printing”. We’ve seen this type of approach attempted previously by Mosaic Manufacturing, but YWW seems to be at an earlier stage of development.
In fact, their Kickstarter campaign does not actually offer a product. Instead it’s really inviting the public to participate in a graduated beta testing program. We think this is perhaps a wise strategy, as the problems we can imagine using this approach are numerous. Problems will have to be detected and resolved before this approach could ever become a real product.
The testing approach is to send participants a specific print file and custom-made spool of multicolored filament to match the print file. Testers will print the file with the custom filament and report back to YWW of their results.
We’re curious to see what kinds of problems will result from this testing. A few come to mind:
- Broken filament – does that invalidate the entire print?
- Inconsistent filament diameter causing jams or gaps
- Rapidly changing color segments – how short can they be?
- Color changeover tolerance – how close is required for correctly colored objects?
- Pause and restart – possible?
YWW will presumably digest the feedback and make improvements to their software. Eventually, they’ll offer access to the software for testers to develop their own custom multicolored filaments for printing their own objects. The custom filaments will be manufactured by YWW.
It’s not clear whether YWW would ever develop a machine to manufacture custom filament on the fly, thus permitting a 3D printer to print arbitrary color objects instantly, so their approach is likely to stay as a custom filament service.
Via Your Wild World and Kickstarter
